While he's quick to say that he didn't choose the title of his white paper, "Between the Bazaar and the Cathedral - Where ITIL®, Business Service Management, and Open Source Converge" in this podcast, Whurley openly talks about the lessons learned and leadership of enterprise software meeting open source, and community involvement in producing quality software.

Listen in on this half-hour conversation where he and Tom Parish talk about community as a self managing and self governing entity. As a case study, the 13,000 registered members on BMC Developer's Network at developer.bmc.com comprise that community and entity for BMC Software.

As Whurley loves to state, software is software is software. He means that you have to decide if you have time or money for any software deployment. Learn if there are mystical calculations for whether open source is better for your situation. You'll enjoy listening in and even finding out what sets Whurley's office apart from other BMC offices.

Bio

Whurley (William Hurley) is the chief architect of Open Source Strategy at BMC Software, Inc. Famous simply as "whurley," he is responsible for creating BMC's open source agenda and overseeing the company's participation in various free, and open source software communities to advance the adoption and integration of BSM solutions. A technology visionary and holder of 11 important patents, whurley brings 16 years of experience in developing groundbreaking technology. He is the chairman of the Open Management Consortium, a non-profit organization advancing the adoption, development, and integration of open source systems management. Named as an IBM Master Inventor, whurley has received numerous awards including an IBM Pervasive Computing Award and Apple Computer Design Award.

Resources

Questions

Your paper talks about the merging of open source, the babbling bazaar with different agendas and approaches, with the cathedral of enterprise software, complex architecture built painstakingly by “individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation.” Since a CMDB is a basic requirement following ITIL, it would seem that the CMDB isv a cathedral. In what ways is that a good thing, and what are some of the downsides of the church of the CMDB?

You’re probably familiar with the terms “whuffie” from and “psychic income” – for our listeners who may not have heard these terms, they roughly translate to reputation, clout, and influence, but are terms usually reserved for individuals’ motivation to contribute to a community or open source project. Do you believe that similar terms are available to describe a company’s reward for participating in and supporting open source?

Your office at BMC is creative yet comfortable, with giant green IKEA leaves overhead and a traditional rug beneath your feet. How do both creativity and comfort levels come into play when companies evaluate open source solutions for solving business problems?

One concern about combining open source with traditional enterprise software is the claim that total cost of ownership is more with open source. Your paper appears to refute that claim – could you expand on that particular concern especially when merging the two makes it more difficult to calculate TCO? Is it valid?

As you know, the ITIL acronym represents a Library with fairly expensive, tightly controlled books. Often people associate open source with free. What are your thoughts on

Do you have any good stories of an IT department that lives between the Cathedral and the Bazaar, and benefits from cathedrals built in an open company culture?

You have a nice list of over a dozen open source solutions for service management, yet only two provide support for ITIL and BSM. Do you think the trends are moving in a way that mean more and more of those open source solutions will support ITIL and BSM, or is there a mismatch in the audience and purchase decision makers – ITIL and BSM solutions are sold to the business types, while open source solutiosn are “sold” to the technical types?

In your IT department, what happens when your alarm levels go from 300 alarms an hour to 30? Would you trust your tools enough to know that the alarms it sends you are truly halting a business service? While Mary Nugent won’t use this podcast to attempt to tell you technical details on the correct alarming thresholds, she will share some excellent stories.

Discover how IT affects even moving the most precious deliveries safely, thanks to IT predictions and avoidance of failure. When does monitoring a printer actually stop trucks from leaving the premises? What surprises her about the future of predictive intelligence? What can non-futurists learn about predicting a system’s behavior with enough data collection? Find out this and more in this informative interview with Mary Nugent, vice president, Service Assurance, BMC Software.

Bio

Mary Nugent, vice president, Service Assurance, BMC Software, is an accomplished software technology executive with extensive expertise and in-depth knowledge in the emerging service management marketplace. She manages BMC’s customer-facing efforts for the company’s Service Assurance portfolio, including infrastructure management, event and impact management, and capacity management products. In addition to her 15 years of technology experience, she also has 10 years of experience in public accounting and isa certified public accountant.

Questions

Predictive intelligence involves a lot of data collection, analysis, and configuration of thresholds and seeking the truth of many data inputs. What can we non-futurists use to help “see” and predict the future? Are dashboards with combined views helpful, or are most people more comfortable in front of their usual threshold and management tools?

One concern about predictive intelligence is that if the collected data is wrong, it’s a very costly problem. What do you think about that concern? Is it valid?

Are there trade-offs to consider when collecting and storing all this data, or is storage so inexpensive to maintain that the returns on storage investment pay out quickly?

Do you have any good stories of an IT department that became “alarm-deaf,” where the noise level of alarms was drowning out meaningful information?

What has surprised you the most about predictive intelligence and where it is today?

What final message do you want to leave listeners with today?

To our listeners – if you have any questions or feedback and input for new shows please let us know. We want to hear from you. Send an email to talk@bmc.com